


Smile Like You Don't Give a Damn

by Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)



Series: Tybathi Hawke Drabbles [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding, Welcome to Kirkwall here have a sword to the face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 22:59:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As little brothers go, Carver could be a lot worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile Like You Don't Give a Damn

Tyb tried smiling at the mirror. 

It made her face ache. And the effect was grim. 

The Ferelden deserter’s blade had barely kissed her flesh, even if the line it had sliced across the bridge of Tyb’s nose and down her cheek was ugly. On the other hand, when the pommel of the deserter’s sword struck Tyb across the face an instant later that had been no glancing blow, but as long as Tyb kept her mouth shut the broken teeth didn’t show. 

Lucky, really. And the cut seemed to be healing properly, despite the filth of the Gallows courtyard and Lowtown. So far as Tyb could tell, by all rights she ought to have been dead. The deserters were, and that was a fact that Tyb hadn’t been able to shake. If things hadn’t - 

Carver’s face appeared behind Tyb’s in the mirror, and Tyb shut the smile down. 

He made a desperately awkward attempt at humor. “Well,” he said, “it wasn’t as though you were going to win any beauty prizes before.”

It might have been easy to get angry, if Tyb hadn’t seen so clearly that he was already gnawing on his own liver over the words. 

Watching his face in the mirror, Tyb could see him going through the same anxious process of self-evaluation that his mind looped through a hundred times a day. Measuring himself against others or against some ideal and finding himself lacking, and the acute awareness of that lack dragging him down into helpless resentment. 

"I’m sorry," he said, and then after a pause added bitterly, "I guess Bethany would have known the right thing to say."

Poor Carver, Tyb thought. Never enough - never fast enough, never strong enough, never smart enough. Never enough of whatever it was that was needed to measure up. Not in his own eyes, anyway, and he couldn’t see what others’ saw when they looked at him. Tyb thought he’d do better if he could. 

Tyb watched Carver war with himself and in her mind’s eye she watched the man who had ruined her face, watched him as he withered on the ground among the bodies of the deserters that Tyb herself had downed, blood spraying from where his sword arm had been only a moment before, until Carver’s blade came down again and cleaved his head in two. 

The deserter had been shrieking and Carver had been screaming, mingled fear and rage, and that had gone on even after the other man fell silent, and none of this was the type of noise that Tyb wanted playing in her head now, but it was worse than that because if she let the screams go on long enough they had a way of taking on Bethany’s voice and - 

And Tyb got up and walked behind Carver and put her arms around his broad shoulders. He wasn’t sure what Tyb was up to but he stooped to let her do it. “Where would I be without you, little brother?” Tyb wondered, resting a cheek against his back. 

"You certainly wouldn’t have all this," Carver said, motioning expansively at the bare walls of Gamlen’s run-down house. 

And that was true. Carver had gotten all three of them into the city while Tyb had still been too sick from pain to be much good to anyone. He’d promised the Red Iron Mercenaries two extra years service should Tyb have died or been otherwise unable or unwilling to fulfill their share of the bargain. 

The cut was healed enough by now, and her teeth weren’t likely to get any better. Tyb figured it was about time that she started doing her bit. 

Tyb would have much rather gone with Athenril’s smugglers, but Gamlen’s other contact had been unwilling to take a gamble on them while Tyb was still wrapped in bandages. That door was closed now. 

Tyb supposed that an ugly face might be a benefit in this new line of work - certainly, you didn’t need to be good looking to bust heads for hire. And if all of this sent her heart beating like a trapped bird, then that was something Tyb could keep to herself.

"No beauty prizes," she agreed, resting her head on Carver’s shoulder and studying their reflections in the mirror. "But Maker, I am still so much better looking than you."

She punched Carver’s shoulder. “Let’s see how much trouble we can get into.”


End file.
